LEARNER AND TEACHER
AUTONOMY IN LANGUAGE
EDUCATION
KWOK Chee Ying Henry 10401474
LAM Yan Yin Felix 10401210
LAU Tik Sang Dickson 09401482
LEE Chi Leung Edmund 10401237
TAM Ming Sum Sammy 09401490
WHAT IS YOUR GOAL
as an English Teacher?
AUTONOMY
Creating spaces
Constraints
Time
Family
Classroom
Discipline
Resources
Workload
Lack of
Training
Class size
Exams
Oriented
Culture
School Politics
EDB
Student diversity
Scheme of Work
Teacher Autonomy
•Benson (2000) ‘right to freedom from control’
•Little (1995) ‘capacity to engage in
self-directed teaching’
•Smith (2000) ‘teachers’ autonomy as learners’
Teacher Autonomy


Aoki (2000) ‘autonomous teachers’
‘the capacity, freedom, and responsibility to make
choices concerning one’s own teaching’
Learner Autonomy

Would it be great if students can learn by themselves?

Misconception: ‘learning without a teacher’

Little (1991) ‘capacity for taking control of learning’
Teacher Autonomy Dimensions

Classroom-based approach to the development of
learner autonomy (Sinclair 2000)
 Prominence of learner autonomy as a goal
 Promoting learner autonomy
 Structuring and scaffolding reflective learning
 Learning ‘pedagogy for autonomy’
 ‘student are to learn to take control and teacher may
need to let go.
Reflection: When to let go, when to control?
Teacher Autonomy Dimensions
PSYCHOLOICAL
TECHNICAL
POLITICAL
a strong sense of
personal
responsibility
(continuous
reflection and
analysis)
how pedagogical
skills can be
acquired
uniform staff
development
programs &
classroom
observations
Capacity for selfdirected
professional
action
Capacity for selfdirected
professional
development
Freedom from
control by others
over professional
action or
development
Linking together
TECHNICAL
PSYCHOLOICAL
In order to promote learner autonomy,
teachers may need to have:
Teacher
Training
Pedagogy
for foster
autonomy
1.
Capacity for
self-directed
teaching
2.
Freedom from
control over
their teaching
3.
Capacity for
self-directed
teacher-learning
Able to apply
to their
teaching
Capacity to grant
learners’
freedom
in learning
Teachers
to be an
autonomous
learner
Exam POLITICAL
Oriented
Culture
Teacher Education (e.g. PGDE)
Teacher
Reflection
Learning
together
with students
as a student
Linking together
PSYCHOLOICAL
Creating Spaces
TECHNICAL
Teacher Autonomy
Attitudes, Skills, and Knowledge (ASK)
Learner Autonomy
POLITICAL
Constraints
Time
Family
Lack of
Training
Resources
Workload
Life-long Learning
Motivated
Classroom Class size
Discipline
Exams
Oriented
Culture
School Politics
EDB
Student diversity
Scheme of Work
Better Language
Learning
LANGUAGE TEACHING
Autonomy in ELT?
Autonomy vs. Methods
Methods
Materials
Design
Autonomy
Grammar Direct
Translation Method
AudioLingual
CLT
TBL
Autonomy in Language Teaching

Grammar translation method
Assigned teaching materials
 Little autonomy


Direct method
Find examples from every day vocabulary and sentences
 Little autonomy


Audio-lingual method
Follow model dialogue and teach through repetition & drilling
 Little autonomy

Autonomy in Language Teaching

Communicative Language Teaching
“It is unified but broadly based, theoretically well informed set
of tenets about the nature of language learning and teaching.”
(Brown H.D. 2001)
 Design learning activities and tasks involving real-life
communication
 Autonomy

Autonomy in Language Teaching

Task based learning

Skehan’s (1998) concept of TBL





Meaning is primary
Communication problem to solve
Relationship to comparable real-world activities
Task completion
Assessment of the task in terms of outcome
Select authentic materials
 Autonomy

Summary (Autonomy vs. Methods)
Methods
Grammar Direct
Translation Method
AudioLingual
Materials
Assigned &
prepared in
advance
Repetition & Design
drilling
learning
activities
Design
Autonomy
Examples
from every
day
CLT
TBL
Authentic
SHARING
Henry

After school enhancement classes (S3 & S6)
Drilling on TSA/ HKCEE / HKALE / HKDSE past paper
 No autonomy


After school enhancement classes (S1, S2, S4, S5)
Less Drilling on past paper
 Flexible group activities & games
 Autonomy

Australian Primary School NET

Syllabus and teaching materials from EDB
(Primary Literacy Reading Program – PLP-R)
 (Primary Literacy Reading/Writing Program – PLP-R/W)


Autonomy in group activities & games with P1 & P2
touch the words
 tailor-made chess board
 baseball score card
 CVC (Consonants Vowels Consonants ) word game
 singing the “left & right” songs, letter songs, etc.

Felix

Teacher

Time limitation


Belief



Syllabus, lesson time, assessments, etc.
If you believe, you will
Encourage reflection
Students

Meaning


“What” to express before “how”
Motivation


Need
Cultural: teacher’s responsibility (Sakai, Takagi and Chu 2010)
Dickson

Scheme of work
Form coordinators deliver the scheme of work to form teachers.
 Have to finish teaching the units and specific items within the
assigned periods.


Teachers
Design worksheets, hangouts and any other teaching materials
other than the textbooks in order to fit the needs of their own
classes
 Always encourage and reinforce students that they are
capable and smart enough to learn more
 Assign more challenging tasks and teach more advanced level
items

Dickson

Students
believe they are capable so they are willing to accept extra
tasks.
 develop a habit that reading Young Post and write down new
vocabulary items on their ‘Learning Log’ every day.
 submit news summary and reflections which are not assigned by
the teacher.
 apply those new items in their writing and speaking tasks.

Edmund

Teacher

Creating spaces out of constraints





Teach Junior High if possible
Try to pick the essentials to teach from the Scheme of Work
Spare as much free time to discuss the weekly news
Learner autonomy – true believer of self-directed learning
Students

Weekly reading and writing as a habit




Reading (Authentic Materials – One news article weekly)
Writing (News report - encourage students’ reflection)
Insist on marking with feedbacks on their weekly writings
Exam-oriented culture as the external driver
Sammy

Background of the school
A Band 3 secondary school
 A connection between the local school and the American
Lutheran Church.
 Department of International Interface
 American volunteers visit the campus by promoting
Christianity and English learning through playing games,
singing songs, visiting local families, participating in the
lessons, etc.

Sammy
Teacher autonomy promotes learner autonomy
through:

Support by the Principal
 Participating several activities with the volunteers from the
US (sightseeing, dining, worshipping, etc.)
 Communication > learning English for exam

Sammy

Teacher Autonomy

Constraint (Senior secondary school)





Society: Expect HKDSE takers have certain proficiency level
Parents: Expect the school has more drilling and practice
Curriculum: Senior form ( preparing for the HKDSE)
Time constraint : Remedial classes for different subjects
Feasible





Junior form
Language arts
Appreciation and enjoyment of the language
American studies lesson (culture, living style, activities)
Facebook connection with the US volunteers
Sammy

Evaluation
Not everyone in the school has the opportunity to
participate
 Able to create the space to enhance both teacher and
student autonomy in junior level.
 Enhancing the autonomy in their early age would strength
the possibility of the development of whole-life learning

DISCUSSION
How can you create more spaces for yourself?
REFERENCES
References






Benson (2010). Teacher education and teacher autonomy: Creating spaces for
experimentation in secondary school English Language teaching. Language
Teaching Research, 14(3), 259-275.
Benson & Huang (2008). Autonomy in the transition from foreign language
learning to foreign language teaching. DELTA: Revista de Documentacao de
Estudos em Linguistica Teorica e Aplicada, 421-439.
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to
language pedagogy (2nd Edition). New York: Addison Wesley Longman
Sakai, S., Takagi, A., Chu, M.P. (2010), Promoting Learner Autonomy: Student
Perceptions of Responsibilities in a Language Classroom in East Asia.
Educational Perspectives v43
Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Smith R.C. (2003). Teacher education for teacher-learner autonomy. Centre for
English Language Teacher Education (CELTE). University of Warwick. UK.
The End
~~~Thank you~~~